# Housing Act 2004, Section 258: HMOs: persons not forming a single household

Extent: E+W

(1) This section sets out when persons are to be regarded as not forming a single household for the purposes of section 254.
(2) Persons are to be regarded as not forming a single household unless—
(a) they are all members of the same family, or
(b) their circumstances are circumstances of a description specified for the purposes of this section in regulations made by the appropriate national authority.
(3) For the purposes of subsection (2)(a) a person is a member of the same family as another person if—
(a) those persons are married to , or civil partners of, each other or live together as if they were a married couple or civil partners;
(b) one of them is a relative of the other; or
(c) one of them is, or is a relative of, one member of a couple and the other is a relative of the other member of the couple.
(4) For those purposes—
(a) a “couple” means two persons who ... fall within subsection (3)(a);
(b) “relative” means parent, grandparent, child, grandchild, brother, sister, uncle, aunt, nephew, niece or cousin;
(c) a relationship of the half-blood shall be treated as a relationship of the whole blood; and
(d) the stepchild of a person shall be treated as his child.
(5) Regulations under subsection (2)(b) may, in particular, secure that a group of persons are to be regarded as forming a single household only where (as the regulations may require) each member of the group has a prescribed relationship, or at least one of a number of prescribed relationships, to any one or more of the others.
(6) In subsection (5) “prescribed relationship” means any relationship of a description specified in the regulations.

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Source: https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2004/34/section/258 (the official version)
Page: https://openlegislation.uk/housing-act-2004/section-258
Contains public sector information licensed under the Open Government Licence v3.0. Source: legislation.gov.uk, The National Archives.